A Birthday Celebration With The Writer – Mad Chaos: January 18, 2001

Azalea Wishes Me Happy Birthday

My twenty-second birthday has come and gone, and it was all work without celebration.  Someone always manages to remember however.  This year it was within an email sent to me by Azalea.  She was just wishing me a happy birthday.  But it came as no surprise considering we were talking about it the night before when on the internet and then on the phone.  

I think Azalea may have actually called me just after midnight yesterday when she left to pick up her sister from work.  She was on her mobile phone sitting in her car at the time, but it was only a brief conversation.  I was on a mobile phone too but the one that Imad left behind at my house when he popped over last year just before Christmas.  Yeah, you would have known about that, but the lousy writer has been having a shocker over these last couple of months.  More on that later.  

A Birthday Writing Diary Entries

My birthday came and went.  My whole day was here and with only one cheerio.  Humble and modest is the way to go though.  

That’s how my day was, low profile and business as usual for the writer whose patience has long since run out.  There was no cake and no party.  

Right about now, the only acceptable celebration will be when these memoirs are caught up on.  You make a wish and blow out the candles for me because the damn bastards never go out.  Ah, petty provocation and aye, what its hassles and stresses do to me.

The Writer Has A Bad Stretch

You know, my memoirs have all of a sudden become a professional affair and it’s hard to go back to the slang of the olden ways, hard to ease the seriousness of the writer and even harder for him to put in a halfhearted effort and remain satisfied.  That’s what this entry is starting to look like, but hey, a man is entitled to a bad stretch every now and again, and now’s the time.  

Who’s watching anyway?  There is no one out there to impress, no one to please or convince in any way.  You can be your hardest critic though.  There is only me at the moment, unless you consider those that have read snippets of my work thus far.  These memoirs have gotten awfully serious though.  

Consider tonight my objective satire, the slang that defeats the intensity and makes my word as their younger selves, when the writer wasn’t even thought of and no care in the gravity of words were considered.  Things were carefree back then but not any more.  

Changes That Impede The Memoir

There have been some big changes that have shaped the way my memoirs perform, many periods where recessions have helped mold writer’s block and others that have impacted on the way the writer performs.  There has, however, been one distinct difference, and particularly over these last two to three months, which in my mind, impedes rather than assists on the stresses of these memoirs.  

This most noticeable change comes from my memoirs no longer orphaning chronology.  By that, I mean to say that the writer feels more inclined to keep the content of one day and its events as one rather than splitting them up into separate entries.  I questioned its morality a couple of months ago.  Now as things get worse, I question it again.  

Was the best method sustained in keeping the daily integrity or as most recently the writer mayst object to, keeping the breadth of his stories intact?  After all, these are just stories.  Separating the stories as orphaned morsels can only confuse and discourage the reader.  Well, that was the intent behind this more robust way of writing, but has it really paid its dividends, or spelt nothing but trouble for me in all these insurmountable months?

Writing once every three nights can’t be healthy.  It’s even worse on morale when those nights have little gain.  What is more important though, and where should the priority lie in my memoirs?  

The last thing I want to be doing is running around like a butcher cleaving at chronology on this writer’s block, but that’ll be about the worth of it tonight.

The Persistent Burden Of Backlog

There are only twelve more nights before the month passes and still no change to this burden of backlog behind me.  I have quit on the gym, stopped going out on the weekends as, much and have even canceled my haircut until as long as it takes for the writer to find his feet.  Nothing seems to be working though, in this, the big squeeze, or should we rather label it the big freeze for dictating all my other pastimes.  

Three nights are still outstanding this month.  Then you have those five nights from last month that still need to be brushed.  However, I am starting to wonder, what is crazier, my still being no closer to my goals or the writer becoming so extreme that he literally has to shut off the outside world in hopes that all remains still to focus on his work?  

I think it is crazy that those five nights are still hanging over my head one month later.  So it’s time for a different strategy.  Yeah, it may be important to pull the big squeeze off and keep on top of things this month, but if we keep waiting for that then things are never going to happen.  

Actually, none of my approaches seem to be working this month, kind of like the first failed assaults of the Soviet Union in one of the World Wars.  Well, they were lucky to escape defeat when winter came along, but it doesn’t seem like the writer is going to have as much luck with the cold weather saving his ass down here.  Nevertheless, we have to come up with some sort of strategy and the “tail and front” tactic would seem to lift some stress off my commanding shoulders.

The “Tail And Front” Writing Strategy

The “tail and front” used to be a popular way of ridding backlogged chronology (back when those two words went hand in hand) but has lost its luster in most recent times due to the new approaches in dealing with my memoirs.  The squeeze has been the newly incorporated strategy in ridding the ongoing burden.  

To the inexperienced eye it could be mistaken for the “tail and front” but the two are very different indeed.  In fact, the only similarity is how they both seem to work on the farthest ends of chronology in an attempt to bridge them together.  

The “tail and front” has long been thought of as the “two scoops” approach, sort of like digging shovels at two ends of a sandy patch and running them across the ground, having scooped up all in their path, until they both meet in the middle.  The squeeze, however, is more focused on the weakest links.  So in first attacking these milder obstacles, in theory, it builds up this resilience over burden.  

This strategy was meant to act as a stepping stone tactic but exhausts itself instead, making the task at hand seem like an ongoing one.  As the writer has found though, the squeeze only makes progress seem like an illusion to what really happens.  

“The Squeeze” Writing Strategy

The squeeze can be effective if used in an appropriate situation, but at most it is loosely popular compared to tried approaches.  All models have their faults, but unlike the “tail and front” whose efforts are always sturdy and dependable, the squeeze is made fickle by its harsh criteria, practical only when the weakest links are on the outermost edges, and then only if there is succession to them.  

I think that the most rewarding gains to morale were made when attacking the most offensive entries, those infamous dreads that increase productivity when the long slog is finally over.  When the big fall, those around them crumble.  So it would seem most advantageous if these impregnable are battered with headlong offensives.  They always sit so smugly way back in the safety of their bunkers, knowing that once one of their infantrymen go down, another will step in to take its place.  That’s why it’s time for this sniper to take out his rifle and pick them off with a revised “tail and front” tactic.  

An army without command is anarchy.  So, with some well-timed hits, could we topple this regime and bring some big bad generals down with it whose defeat has for so long thwarted me.